Obituary: Cliff Graves

He joined the drawing office of Reuters’ engineering production department in London in 1988 although he had worked as a sub-contractor since the early 1980s, Martin Davids writes. In those innovative times Reuters would design and build hardware and software that was not available or was too expensive to purchase, particularly for application in Trading Room Systems.

Cliff was said to be the best printed circuit board (pcb) designer and layout specialist in the engineering community that Reuters worked with. His speciality was packaging the designs into the smallest boards possible and could outperform the pcb layout software of the day.

One major triumph was the Colour Video Switch which was by far the best and most effective switch in the industry. It generated millions in profit. In the 1990s, as an off-the-shelf policy was adopted, the engineering department was dissolved and Cliff joined the global support team and became a software specialist for the testing of products designed for deployment in the field.

Cliff retired in 2010. He then pursued his hobbies of golf and cars. He became involved with the Reuters Golf Society at which point he designed and maintained its website. He became the developer and administrator of the website and was also master of the members’ handicaps, standing no nonsense on this occasionally touchy subject.

In recent years, mainly due to ill health Cliff was unable to play as regularly as he would have liked. He remained dedicated to work behind the scenes, keeping the website up to date and running it in sometimes very difficult circumstances, including the transition to Thomson Reuters and the removal of company sponsorship.

Cliff also built a couple of really unusual cars, owned a TVR and had an order in for a Tesla model 3 due for delivery next year.

Cliff’s funeral will take place on Wednesday 22 August at 13:20 pm at the South Essex Crematorium. ■